Slashdot Mirror
Physicists Uncover TV Show Biases
Tsalg writes "Interesting to see what scientists can uncover from watching one of the silliest TV shows in Europe, where singers represent countries in a contest, and then countries vote for.. for what exactly? Well it was reported in a Nature article where the show was used as a barometer of European nations' feelings about their neighbours, that
Britain is in harmony with Europe, Nordic countries fancy each others' stars, and France is out on a limb."
The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual contest where the countries of Europe (or, more accurately, members of the European Broadcasting Union, which includes Israel) come together, each put forward a song and performer, and have a contest.
.. then all the people in Europe call in and vote while a dire interlude performance is shown (this is how Riverdance became famous). After that, each country is contacted and a representative reads out the votes that country's viewers gave.. which vary between 1 and 12 points.
Generally twenty four countries make it through to the final (which is all most people watch).. four of those are automatic placements from the main contributors (UK, France, Germany, Spain) and the rest survived the semi-final.
Then they all perform a song, most of which are hideously awful, and sometimes ham up national stereotypes in the most hysterical of manners (this year, Moldova had a crazy celtic style thrash rock song with some 90 year old woman banging a drum)
Inevitably, national biases always come out. Greece and Cyprus often give each other 12 points, all the Nordic countries vote for each other, and, nowadays, all the Baltic states vote for each other too. Until recently, Greece and Turkey would never give each other any points.
The whole contest is really an opportunity to laugh at our fellow Europeans, see some hideous songs which will never make it anywhere, and listen to some great commentary which pokes fun at the whole charade.
For those in the US, it's actually a large elaborate practical joke to make make people look silly.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
Uh, actually, I am.
I know I'm a moron for replying to an AC, but here goes. Picture this scenario: you get a subpoena or a discovery request for e-mail from the CFO from five years ago. You retrieve a tape from your archival storage company, and there's an audit trail showing it's been there for four years 11 months. Either the FBI agent or opposing counsel's expert looks over your shoulder while you restore from that tape onto a lab system, unconnected to anything else, running just your MTA of choice under your OS of choice. Let's say it's Notes. File date/time stamps are verified by you and the FBI guy. You then connect one other (verified and trusted) system to your message store, running the MUA of choice. You open the CFO's mailbox and retrieve the requested e-mails. At what point were you able to insert something into the message store?
Sure, I know how to telnet to port 25 and run the appropriate SMTP commands. So what? How do I modify that old message store? Say it's a Notes or GroupWise database?
Sounds to me like you are not very conversant with enterprise-scale e-mail systems, but just learned how to spoof SMTP.
The host, Terry Wogan of BBC Radio 2, has to be the only reason I watch the Eurovision Song Contest. As a UK resident too, it is one of the silliest programs we have on our schedule -- and we continue to humiliate ourselves year after year.
This year, we lost out right at the bottom, with only 18 points. Compare that to a Moldovan granny banging a drum, which sailed on to 6th place with 128 points. And, before you ask, the granny in question was beating the drum from a rocking chair on stage. The commentary before and after that little number was hilarious.
The real problem with Eurovision, is the underlying politics. The Eastern European and Baltic Countries cannot dismiss this as a singing competition. They instead fight furiously for votes, and vote for the neighbours whenever possible. This is what is turning the whole competition into a farce... the Baltic 'block voting' means that the 4 primary contributors to the European economy (France, UK, Germany and Spain) are the last 4 on the leaderboard -- year after year.
I makes me wonder exactly why we continue this ridiculous tradition -- Greece gives 12 points to Cyprus, Cyprus gives 12 points to Greece, and on and on... Quite frankly also, the singing was abysmal -- I can sing better when drunk than the winning entry this year, and that is saying something.
A more graphic description of the voting patterns can be found here It clearly show that us Brits (and Irish) vote for the better songs while those Southern (and Eastern) Europeans can't be trusted.
Speaking of which, I was re-waching my vhs tape of "Metropolis" (silent film made in 1927 about the future) and was amazed to spot a metric clock on the wall! (just did a search and found a shot of it.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
French decimal time is sometimes called "metric time" because it was introduced around the same time as the metric system and both were decimal, but it was not part of the decree creating the original metric system and its units were named for the hour, minute and second, instead of using metric prefixes. Other decimal time standards, such as Swatch Internet Time, are not considered metric time.
mbbac
Exactly. Remember a couple of years ago when we got zero? That was just months after we went to war with Iraq, much to Europe's annoyance. Coincidence? I think not.
The article is devoid of data. The text of the study can be found here though: http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/?0505071
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
This year, we lost out right at the bottom, with only 18 points. Compare that to a Moldovan granny banging a drum, which sailed on to 6th place with 128 points.
You can't quite blame that on friendship voting though. (I.e. they got points from a lot more places than just their neighbors)
The group in question (Zdob si Zdub), is an established group in East Europe (4 albums), with several hits and are pretty well known in Russia, the Ukraine, Belarus, Romania, Hungary, etc.
Like them or not, a lot of East Europe does and that's more of a cultural thing than a friendship thing.
Friendship only goes so far too.. Norway only gave Sweden (who's song totally sucked) a single point.
Uh...according to the CIA Factbook even Mexico has a bigger GDP than Spain. The top 4 in Europe should be Germany, UK, France, and Italy. Italy, not Spain. Spain was and ever is a bucolic backwater, sort of like the southern half of Italy.
Physicists tend to be good at applying statistics to real world phenomena because they do that a lot. So if a physicist tells you something statistical you should listen to them.
I am trolling